About the game

Languages

There are perhaps six or seven thousand languages in the world. Even so-called hyperpolyglots, people who learn to speak six or more fluently, barely scratch the surface. You and I will never be able to speak all these languages, but perhaps we can learn to recognise just a few. That's what the game's about.

Audio sources

Originally the game relied exclusively one or two broadcasters that supported many languages, but now it has been rebuilt to use an more open set of audio samples, in the form of the Wide Language Index. The Wide Language Index is a listing of internet radio and podcasts in many languages, along with annotations that say that parts of those podcasts are good to use as examples.

I'm currently seeking new contributors to the Wide Language Index. If you're a developer who knows a little Python and git, and are interested in languages, shoot me an email.

Usage data

Are you a researcher or hobbyist interested in what languages people confuse? Take a look at our confusion dataset, containing some 16 million user guesses. I describe it in more detail in this blog post.

About the author

I'm Lars Yencken, a language lover and ex-researcher living in Stockholm, Sweden. Learn more on my homepage or find me at [email protected].